Unless there be something uncongenial or positively repulsive about one, a person in my situation, with a jovial hearty turn, and a little money in his pockets to add a streak of comfort to a mess now and then, becomes to a certainty a mighty favourite with all the warrant and petty officers, boatswain's mates, old quartermasters, et hoc genus omne; and I flatter myself that had I gone overboard, or been killed in any of the skirmishes that, with the recklessness of boyhood, I had shoved my nose into, there would have been as general a moan made for me along the 'tween decks, as for the untimely demise of poor Dicky Phantom, the monkey.
My friend, the aforesaid Dick, had been for six months fourth lieutenant of H.M.S. Gazelle, on board of which, as already mentioned, Sir Oliver Oakplank had his broad pennant[1] hoisted, as the commander-in-chief on the African station.
The last time they had touched at Cape Coast they took in a Spanish felucca, that had been previously cut out of the Bonny river, with part of her cargo of slaves on board.
She had cost them a hard tussle, and several of the people had fallen by the sword in the attack, but more afterwards from dysentery and marsh fever, the seeds of which had doubtless been sown in the pestilential estuary at the time of the attack; although there is no disputing that they were much more virulently developed afterwards than they would otherwise have been, by a week's exposure in open boats to the deleterious changes of the atmosphere. The excellent commodore, therefore, the father of his crew, seeing the undeniable necessity of lessening the exposure of the men in such a villanous climate, instantly wrote home to the Admiralty, requesting that half-a-dozen small vessels might be sent to him, of an easy draught of water, so that they might take charge of the boats, and afford a comfortable shelter to their crews; at the same time that they should be able to get over the bars, without damage, of the various African rivers, where the contraband Guineamen were in the habit of lurking. To evince that he practised what he preached, he instantly fitted out the captured felucca on his own responsibility, manned her with five-and-twenty men, and gave the command of her to the third lieutenant.
She had been despatched about a fortnight before in the direction of Fernando Po, and we had stood in on the morning of the day on which my narrative commences, to make cape Formosa, which was the rendezvous fixed on between us. About three o'clock, P.M., when we were within ten miles of the cape, without any appearance of the tender, we fell in with a Liverpool trader, bound to the Brass river to load palm oil and sandalwood. She reported that the night before they had come across a Spaniard, who fired into them, when they sheered-to with an intent to speak him. The master said that, when first seen, the strange sail was standing right in for the river ahead of us; and, from the noises he heard, he was sure he had negroes on board. It was therefore conjectured that she was one of the vessels who had taken in part of her cargo of slaves at the Bonny river, and was now bound for the Nun or Brass river to complete it. They were, if any thing, more confirmed in this, by the circumstance of his keeping away and standing to the south-west the moment he found they were hauling in for the land, as if anxious to mislead them, by inducing a belief that he was off for the West Indies or Brazil. This was the essence of the information received from the Liverpool-man; but from the description of the Don, taking also into account the whereabouts he was fallen in with, I had no doubt in my own mind of his being the very identical villain who had plundered me. The same afternoon we fell in with an American, who rejoiced our hearts by saying that he had been chased by a vessel in the forenoon answering the description of the felucca. Immediately after we hove about, and stood out to sea again, making sail in the direction indicated. In consequence of our overhauling this vessel, the commodore had put off his dinner for an hour; and when all the ropes had been coiled down, and every thing made snug after tacking, he resumed his walk on the weatherside of the quarterdeck, in company with Mr. David Sprawl, the first lieutenant.
The commodore was a red-faced little man, with a very irritable cast of countenance, which, however, was by no means a true index to his warm heart, for I verily believe that no commander was ever more beloved by officers and men than he was. He had seen a great deal of service, and had been several times wounded; once, in particular, very badly by a grapeshot, that had shattered his left thigh, and considerably shortened it, thereby giving him a kick in his gallop, as he himself used to phrase it, until the day of his death. He was a wag in his way, and the officer now perambulating the deck alongside of him was an unfailing source of mirth; although the commodore never passed the limits of strict naval etiquette, or the bounds of perfect good breeding in his fun. The gallant old fellow was dressed in faded nankeen trowsers—discoloured cotton stockings—shoes, with corn-holes cut in the toes—an ill-washed and rumpled white Marseilles waistcoat—an old blue uniform coat, worn absolutely threadbare, and white and soapy at the seams and elbows; each shoulder being garnished with a faded gold lace strap, to confine the epaulets when mounted, and that was only on a Sunday. His silk neckcloth had been most probably black once, but now it was a dingy brown; and he wore a most shocking bad hat—an old white beaver, with very broad brims, the snout of it fastened back to the crown with a lanyard of common spunyarn; buttoned up, as it were, like the chapeaux in Charles the Second's time, to prevent it flapping down over his eyes. He walked backwards and forwards very quickly, taking two steps for Sprawl's one, and whenever he turned he gave a loud stamp, and swung briskly about on the good leg as if it had been a pivot, giving a most curious indescribable flourish in the air with the wounded limb in the round-coming, like the last quiver of Noblet's leg in an expiring pirouette.
Lieutenant Sprawl, the officer with whom he was walking and keeping up an animated conversation, was also in no small degree remarkable in his externals, but in a totally different line. He was a tall man, at the very least six feet high, and stout in proportion; very square-shouldered; but, large as he was, his coat seemed to have been made to fit even a stouter person, for the shoulder-straps (I think that is the name) projected considerably beyond his shoulders, like the projecting eaves of a Swiss cottage, thus giving the upper part of his figure a sharp ungainly appearance. Below these wide-spreading upperworks he tapered away to nothing at the loins, and over the hips he was not the girth of a growing lad. His thighs were very short, but his legs, from the knee down, were the longest I ever saw in man, reversing all one's notions of proportion or symmetry, for they gradually swelled out from the knee, until they ended in the ankle, which emulated, if it did not altogether surpass, the calf in diameter. When you looked at him in a front view, his lower spars, from the knee down, were a facsimile of the letter V reversed; that is, with the apex uppermost, while the long splay feet formed the strokes across at the bottom, into which the shanks or shin-bones were morticed amidships as nearly as may be, so that the heel projected aft very nearly as far as the toe did forward, as if he had been built after the model of an Indian proa, to sail backwards or forwards as might be required, without either tacking or wearing. These formidable looking props were conspicuously stuck out before him, where they kept cruising about, of their own accord apparently, as if they were running away with the man; while, as he walked, he vehemently swung his arms backwards and forwards, as if they had been paddles necessary to propel him ahead, carrying on leisurely when he first turned, but gradually increasing his pace as he proceeded, until he sculled along at a terrible rate. His head was very large, and thatched with a great fell of coarse red hair, hanging down in greasy masses on each side of his pale freckled visage, until it blended into two immense, whiskers, which he cultivated under his chin with such care, that he appeared to be peeping through a fur collar, like a Madagascar ourang-outang. His eyes were large, prominent, and of a faded blue, like those of a dead fish; his general loveliness being diversified by a very noticeable squint. He had absolutely no eyebrows, but a curious nondescript sort of tumble-out forehead, as like an ill-washed winter-turnip in its phrenological developement as one could well imagine; and as for his nose, it had the regular twist of a rifleman's powder-horn. But his lovely mouth, who shall describe it? Disdaining to claim acquaintance with the aforesaid beak, it had chosen its site under the left eye, so that a line—I here address myself to mathematical readers—drawn from the innermost corner of the right eye,